One of her ex-husbands called her ”a steel butterfly,” and watching Loretta Young’s better performances, a viewer senses, beyond the prim elegance that became her hallmark, both ambition and a knowing, womanly passion.

Young, who died Aug. 12 in Los Angeles of ovarian cancer at 87, was a pillar of lovely rectitude on screen — while falling hard for married costars Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable (despite the actress’ lifelong refusal to confirm the rumor, even her adopted daughter came to believe she was the fruit of her mother’s affair with Gable during the filming of Call of the Wild). In the late 1930s, Young was blackballed for breaking her studio contract to go freelance — yet came back to win an Oscar for 1947’s The Farmer’s Daughter. At a time when television was Hollywood’s public enemy No. 1, she was the first major star to tackle a weekly series — and The Loretta Young Show ran eight years and won three Emmys. ”If you want a place in the sun,” she once said, ”you have to expect a few blisters.” Young was simply too classy to let them show. Five films to remember her by: